


Dally in Duty

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Birthday, Control, Discipline, Dynamics of Control, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, Friendship, Gen, Honor, Knight & Squire, Memory, Mental Abuse, abusive dynamics, celebration, magical abuse, mental manipulation, psychological abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 21:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15567153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Roger is determined to exert control over every aspect of Alex's life and ensure that he doesn't dally in his duties.





	Dally in Duty

**Author's Note:**

> This story portrays unhealthy, abusive dynamics between an adult and a minor, so please proceed with caution and avoid any material that might be triggering for you. The author, of course, doesn't condone such behavior.

Dally in Duty

“I’m finished copying and editing your notes on another experiment, Your Grace.” Alex laid his quill on the desk where he was working in his knightmaster’s study. As he stretched his sore wrists and fingers—aching from rewriting and organizing the notes Duke Roger had created on myriad incomprehensible experiments all afternoon because he might not understand magic but he was adept at bringing order to messy notes and simplifying measurements with his keen mind for mathematics—he saw the sky shifting to twilight outside the windows and stifled a sigh. 

His knightmaster hated any noises—no matter how faint—that might indicate protest or complaint, and Alex hoped to charm Duke Roger into granting him even an hour of free time for the first time in months. In comparison to Duke Roger, Duke Gareth, who had once seemed so stingy with allowing pages freedom, was a fount of generosity when it came to offering time off, Alex thought with a weary, twisted nostalgia for his years as a page. 

“Excellent.” Duke Roger glanced up from a scroll he was reading with an arched eyebrow that suggested he couldn’t fathom why Alex was sharing this information with him. “No need to notify me whenever you complete the notes on one of my experiments, however. Just proceed to copy the next one without wasting your time or interrupting me.” 

“Your Grace, it’s Gary’s birthday.” Alex’s palms were so sweaty—even this commend would be regarded by his knightmaster as a defiance of the order against wasting time and interrupting—that he didn’t dare reach for another piece of parchment with ink that he might smear. 

“Good for him.” Duke Roger’s manner was pleasantly puzzled as if Gary’s birthday were a fact that bore no relevance to him or Alex. “I hope he’s enjoying it. A lad’s birthday only comes once a year, after all.” 

Since that was as good an opening as he would ever get, Alex seized it. “Yes, that’s why his friends are hosting a party for him in his room, and his knightmaster has given him the day off…” 

Duke Roger’s icy stare froze the words in Alex’s mouth, and they didn’t thaw when his knightmaster continued coldly, “I trust, Alex, that you aren’t so callow as to seek to avoid your manifold duties to me under the feeble pretext of a friend’s birthday?” 

“No, Your Grace.” Alex spoke swiftly, knowing there was only one response to such a dangerous question from his knightmaster, but he was so desperate to celebrate at least a sliver of Gary’s birthday with him that he risked Duke Roger’s wrath by adding, “I haven’t been avoiding my duties to you, though. I’ve been attending to them all day, and Gary is my best friend, so I though it would be appropriate to take some time to celebrate with him.” 

“You thought wrong.” Duke Roger’s book slammed shut in an ominous sign of his flaring temper. “Worse still, you thought selfishly about the revelry you could have at a friend’s party while neglecting your responsibilities to me. If everyone in the realm took their vows of fealty as lightly as you do, the country would have collapsed a thousand times over by now.” 

“Your Grace.” Alex was proud his voice didn’t quiver to betray how the accusation of slackness in fulfilling his obligations slice through the heart of his integrity. He served his knightmaster faithfully and diligently from dawn until dusk and beyond. More gratingly, he never received a reward—-whether in Duke Roger’s silken praise or leisure time with his friends—for it as the laws of fealty stated he was owed in exchange for his loyalty. “I haven’t been granted an hour’s leave in months.” 

“Nor will you unless it’s your own birthday, squire.” Duke Roger’s arms folded forbiddingly as a barred drawbridge across his chest. “Then if you serve me well and without argument, I might allow you an hour’s freedom, but I’ll not grant you such for a friend’s birthday. I know you’ll waste the time carousing as lads do instead of accomplishing valuable work. At your age, you require the discipline that can only come from doing your duty rather than chasing the fleeting pleasure of dabbling in debauchery with your friends. You ought to thank me for giving you the discipline you need as you grow into a knight prepared to make sacrifices to honor your obligations to the Crown.” 

“I’ve obligations to my friends in addition to those to you and the the Crown, Your Grace.” As he pointed this out, Alex had a flickering fear that shivered down his spine as he wondered if Duke Roger was going to smite him with magical lightning for challenging him as a god might. “I’m asking the hour for my friend’s sake, not my own.” 

“Liar.” Duke Roger’s eyes burned like the hottest flames. “You’re concerned only with yourself, and I won’t listen to any more lies, selfishness, or impertinence from you. I’ll lock your jaw until you remember to keep a civil tongue in your head if I have to, Alexander.” 

Alex didn’t doubt that the duke had the power to inflict such a torture upon him. Nothing—no matter how dreadful—seemed to be beyond his knightmaster’s Gift to achieve. Somehow the idea of his mouth betraying him so he couldn’t even scream in pain or revolt terrified him more than any magical agony Duke Roger had wielded against him in the past. Even if it was cowardly, he had to flee if only to preserve what remained of his dignity and sanity. Entire body alert for attach, Alex bolted to his feet and charged for the door as if trying to outrace oncoming warhorses. 

Duke Roger made no attempt to hamper him by magical means or otherwise. Instead he emitted a tinkling laugh that made the hairs on the nape of Alex’s neck stand erect as sentries. “You can run, Alex, but you’ll come back, and when you do, I’ll make you regret bolting on me like this.” 

Trying to forget his knightmaster’s threat, which was all the more horrifying for the musical tone in which it had been delivered, as he sometimes could find everything slipping from his mind after gazing too long into the shimmering depths of Duke Roger’s jeweled necklace, Alex sough refuge in Gary’s room.

When he arrived in Gary’s chamber, it was empty except for Gary and the flagons of ale and platter of cake that attested to a lively celebration Gary must have enjoyed with their other friends. If he could have remembered what joy and liberty sounded like, he could have imagined his friends’ laughter as they jested with one another during their free time. The Alex who had friends to laugh with seemed a different, distant being lost in the mist of memory. 

“Happy birthday, Gary.” Alex forced himself to smile, grateful that his muscles could still form the gesture on command. Holding out an embellished book he had bought in Corus when Duke Roger had dispatched him to the marketplace to purchase a long list of herbs, he announced somewhat superfluously, “I’ve a present for you.” 

“Thank you.” Gary’s broad, blissful grin as he flicked through the pages of the book Alex had bought him chased the shadows embedded in Alex’s bones when Duke Roger had berated and punished him for dallying in the market out of his body like a strong healing spell. Reading was Gary’s notion of the Peaceful Realms during his mortal life, and he would be pleased that Alex had thought to get him so extravagant a tome. “The engravings are spectacular. I’ll treasure it all my life.” 

“You’d better or I’ll be furious I wasted that gold on you.” Alex hoped that he had remembered how to banter with some semblance of smoothness. He didn’t want anyone—even Gary—to suspect that he was less than happy as Duke Roger’s squire because he was happy, wasn’t he? He was supposed to be happy to serve one of the mightiest men in the kingdom. Happy was how he should feel after being honored beyond his merits. It was ingratitude and insubordination to bring on the highest shame to feel otherwise, and Alex wouldn’t disgrace himself even before his oldest friend. “I know you need the illustrations so you can understand the reading.” 

“So cruel to me on my birthday and after I’ve been kind enough to save a slice of cake for you all this time.” Gary chortled as he extended a saucer of cake to Alex, who accepted it with a nod of appreciation. 

“I’m sorry I took so long to arrive.” Alex should tasted the sweetness of the honey the cake was dipped in and the citrus tang of the orange and lemon zest sprinkled through its softness but instead he tasted the bitterness of guilt. Guilt at abandoning and neglecting the friends who had once brightened even his darkest days in the pages’ wing. Growing apart was natural, he told himself, but it still broke something inside him. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” 

“You don’t have to, idiot.” Gary seemed surprised that Alex had interpreted his teasing seriously, and Alex winced at having committed the cardinal crime among boys: taking a joke as if it were intended in earnest. A misstep like that could mean social ruin with anyone except Gary. “I was just teasing you about how seriously you take your duties to Duke Roger, but maybe I’m just jealous because Father chose my birthday to imply it’s past time I grew up by settling down into a miserable, mischief-devoid existence. No doubt he wants me to emulate your worthy example and become a stick-in-the-swamp.” 

“I’ve just run away from my knightmaster.” Alex snorted, praying to any listening and benevolently disposed deity that he sounded playfully derisive rather than rattled by his own disobedience. “I’ve a few suggestions where you can stick your stick-in-the-swamp remark.” 

“Glad to know that the wild Alex I befriended is still buried deep inside you somewhere.” Gary’s eyes twinkled as he launched into a story of one of their first tricks together that earned them a month’s punishment work that at the time had made Alex fearful his fingers would fall off but now he considered all that work a summer picnic compared to the writing he was expected to do for the duke on a daily basis out of duty. 

They spent an hour swapping stories of their mishaps and adventures over their long years of friendship, glorying in a past that distracted from the ugly present truth that Alex could make no promise when he would next be able to escape Duke Roger to enjoy any free time with his friends. Only when Alex’s stomach began to roil with a sickness that didn’t come from ale or cake but from the anticipation of the inevitable discipline Duke Roger would inflict upon him for his disrespect did Alex rise and take his leave with a final birthday well-wish. 

His feet weighed him down like stones and his heart sank to the floor as he trudged back to his knightmaster’s quarters. Duke Roger awaited him not in the study but in the parlor beside a roaring fire. 

“Alex.” Duke Roger gave a smile that scorched Alex’s skin worse than flame, patting the sofa beside him in an invitation Alex ached to resist. “Come sit and we’ll talk.” 

“Yes, Your Grace.” Alex couldn’t say anything else, and although every muscle coiled inside him yelled at him to flee, he crossed on pudding knees to perch tense as a startled bird on the couch. Bowing his head, he said in scarcely above a whisper, “Forgive my disgraceful behavior. I should never have contradicted you or run away from you.” 

“You shouldn’t have.” Duke Roger’s smile faded into severity. “You’ve neglected your duties and disrespected me most egregiously. For your misbehavior today, I could dismiss you from my service.” 

“Please don’t, Your Grace.” Alex couldn’t bear the scorn and the speculation that would be heaped upon him if he was cast from Duke Roger’s service. Private punishment was a nightmare he could never awaken from but public humiliation would be a fate worse than death. At least in death, honor might be preserved in memory. “I’ll accept any discipline you see fit to give me without argument but please grant me the mercy of remaining in your service.” 

“You will indeed accept any discipline I ever bestow upon your without complaint and perform every duty I require of you with unquestioning obedience.” Duke Roger grabbed the wrist of Alex’s sword arm, which was so helpless to defend Alex, dragging it toward him and turning it so the palm splayed before him. As an unbidden memory of his childhood tutor wrapping his palms with a ruler swelled in Alex’s mind, Duke Roger tapped almost thoughtfully at the exposed heel of Alex’s hand, asking in a manner deceptively mild as the calm before a storm, “I’ve your word on that, I trust, Alex?” 

“Yes, Your Grace.” Alex’s reflexes twitched to yank away from the duke but his mind locked him in place by snapping at his body that such defiance of discipline would never be permitted and any attempts to evade punishment would only multiply it. He wouldn’t abase his own dignity by futile struggle. 

“Marvelous.” Duke Roger purred like a wildcat from the jungles of the Copper Isles. “Not that I doubt your word, but to help you remember your promise, I’ll make certain it’s kept on the back of your hand. Whenever you defy me or dally in your duties, you’ll feel the back of your own hand until you obey me or resume the duties you owe me. Understand?” 

“Yes, Your Grace.” Alex could barely breathe nonetheless express the bewilderment boiling inside him. 

“Not quite well enough I think. You need firsthand experience to truly understand.” Duke Roger’s face stayed serene but excitement blazed in his eyes as pain tore like forks of lightning across Alex’s palm. 

Flesh felt as if it were being stripped from wrists to his fingertips but none of his skin broke or bled. Every bone in his hand screamed it was shattering, and each nerve stabbed as though pierced by a sword. He bit his tongue until he tasted iron—pledging inwardly that he would eat off his own tongue before he howled like a baby in the crib from his agony—and finally a chuckling Duke Roger eased the pain. 

“Thank me for the discipline I’m providing you.” Duke Roger’s order was firm despite the laughter he had enjoyed after Alex’s punishment concluded. 

When Alex hesitated, his hand began to invisibly rip itself again, and he burst out, syllables stumbling over each other, “Thank you for the discipline, Your Grace.” 

“You’re welcome.” Duke Roger pressed a kiss into Alex’s sweat-soaked forehead and stroked at Alex’s shaking back as Alex blinked back searing tears that blinded him with mingled rage and shame at what was being done to him—the violation he was allowing to happen to himself. “I’ve only your best interests at heart. You don’t want to grow into a man lax in your duties or disrespectful of your superiors. Only my discipline is strong enough to save you from yourself, my frightfully stubborn squire.”


End file.
